Who is Carl Green?

A tinkerer who converted his childhood hobby of transforming the old cars of the
Kansas countryside into an itinerant career of customizing cars for hot rodders.
He is the namesake of the CGE Pacer, he is the designer of the uniquely esoteric
Pacer pickup and his life’s goal is the same as that of the World’s Fastest
Indian.

“I like to go fast,” he said.

Shoot, I don’t know the difference between a master cylinder and six cylinder,
but I still want to be Carl Green when I grow up.

So, how did Green grow up?

“Well, growing up in the country in central Kansas there wasn’t a whole lot to
do but take cars apart and put them back together,” Green explained. “I cut up a
lot of cars that never got put back together.”

At 13, Green found his first success with a 1928, Ford Model A coupe.

“It was a joint effort with my brother, who was 15,” Green said. “We cut the top
off to make it a convertible and used a brush to paint it red and white. We
painted lightening bolts on the doors and put a number 11 on it because 1’s were
the easiest number to paint.”

In the mid-1960s, Green moved to Topeka to work in a speed shop that transformed
standard engines into high-performance engines. Soon thereafter, Darryl Starbird,
a custom-car and hot-rod designer, hosted a car show in which Green really,
really, really wanted to serve as a “flunky.”

“By the end of the weekend, I had bothered him enough, and he told me I could
come to Wichita to work for him part-time,” Green said.

Thus began Green’s career of regular moves and irregular work hours. To gain
professional experience on engines, Green moonlighted at The Boeing Company from
4:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. after putting in an eight-hour workday with Starbird. He
would then return to Starbird’s shop to practice welding for a couple of hours.

When did he sleep?

“I didn’t very much, but I was only 20, had inexhaustible energy and was excited
about the opportunity,” Green said.

Green stopped working on aircraft engines after six months, but continued to
intermittently work for Starbird during the next five years. During this time,
his developing expertise in hammer welding also led him to California to work
for Dean Jeffries, the automotive styler of the Monkey Mobile, and to work in
Chicago for Dave Puhl at the House Kustoms. The latter was a one-year project
called the Phaz II, which incidentally involved an AMC 343 engine.

For the next few years, Green continued his gypsy travels around the country to
develop custom cars for movies, movie stars and automotive magazines, but he
received no credit because he modified the cars under the names of other
designers.

“Each person I worked under had their own style, and I took the best from each
one of them and applied it to my processes,” Green said. “Most of these guys
wouldn’t let their competition see anything, but because I worked for them, I
got on the inside track.”

In 1974, Green took the leap and set up Carl Green Enterprises in Van Nuys,
California with the help of his friend, Gene Winfield. Movie and magazine-feature cars accounted for much of his business,
but he also began in earnest his work on Pacers.

“Where I lived was a hub for custom-built cars, but I was pretty much the only
AMC guy there. I was pretty much the only AMC guy period,” Green said, and then
laughed. “You know, I always picked the underdogs.”

But, a spot of pity wasn’t Green’s only rationale to sweat over Pacer
customization.

“It was a challenge because it’s the only car I ever worked on that wasn’t the
same from left to right,” Green said. “The passenger’s door is four inches
longer than the driver’s door, which makes everything on the passenger’s side
slightly different. I couldn’t duplicate anything.”

Green partnered with Randall AMC in Mesa, AZ to do a custom-car design of the
Pacer in two issues of Hot Rod magazine (see below). The dealer installed
an AMC 401 engine, but the larger engine required larger tires “so that the V-8
didn’t burn the skinny wheels of the Pacer,” Green explained.

Green built flares for the wheel wells, designed a front spoiler and did a
custom-paint job. He bought the car from Randall AMC and showcased it at the AMC
car show in Las Vegas.

“The dealers were all excited about this performance car,” Carl said. “The Pacer
was kind of bland, and there wasn’t anything that gave it a kick. In magazine
articles, they called it the Poor Man’s Porsche. The Pacer handled well, but it
looked like a Porsche that had been squeezed the wrong way.”

The positive feedback birthed the CGE Pacer. Green made fiberglass molds of his
customization and advertised the kits to AMC dealers as a way to morph the Pacer
into a more muscular vehicle with a better stance.

“I got the list of dealers from AMC and made up a brochure for the body kit,”
Green said. “I still remember buying the stamps because I couldn’t believe how
much they cost. I realized that I would have to sell at least three kits to pay
for just the stamps.”

Green recouped his stamp expenditure and then some. He sold around 150 kits to
AMC dealers from New Jersey to Canada, Texas and California.

The resulting press of the CGE Pacer sparked a friendship between Green and Dick
Teague, the designer of the Pacer and Vice President of Design at AMC. Teague
back-doored Pacers, Gremlins and Jeeps for Green to modify for magazine
features.

Green shared with Teague his idea of a Pacer pickup, and, in 1976, Green used
the platform of a preproduction Pacer station wagon to create his brainchild.
Throughout the four-month project, Green was careful to maintain the body style
without flare, fender or spoiler modifications. He even went so far as to paint
the pickup burnt orange, a stock AMC color. He sent photos of the pickup to
Teague.

Teague's response?

“‘Where are the flares?’ he asked me,” Green said. “He wanted a sport truck, so
I added flares, larger tires, and flames.”

Pacer urban legend has it that several Pacer pickups existed due to the 36
magazine articles published on the pickup.

“I started repainting it so that it looked like a different pickup,” Green said
to reveal his slight of hand. “There are a lot of people out there that think
there were a half dozen pickups, but it was the same one.”

Though AMC took the pickup on tour in 1977 to raise capital from banks and
investment companies, the company struggled to remain afloat. The demise of AMC did not, however, stop
Green’s work with the Pacer. He painted the returned pickup red, white, and
blue, dubbed it the “Lil’ Gopher” and gave it to Evel Knievel as a utility
vehicle for his shows. He also customized Pacers to serve as BF Goodrich pace
cars for the IMSA racing circuit, and Amos Johnson and Howdy Holmes raced CGE
Pacers in the circuit as team HiBall.

I had to ask: How did the CGE stand up to the racecar competition?

“Well, I think they did okay,” Green said.

Green’s Pacer days eventually set, but the gap quickly filled with one-off
custom designs and magazine features for Fords, Toyotas, Cadillacs, and other
makes. He reconstructed the famed Rod and Custom Dream Truck of the early 1950s
and built an all-metal bat mobile. Currently, he is a guest of the television
show, Building With the Best, produced by Rich Evans and his old friend
Winfield, in which he and the rest of the best restore Bill Cushenbery’s
legendary Silhouette of the early 1960s. And then of
course, he tinkers with his own cars: a Ford Focus, a Honda Element, and very
soon, a Mini Cooper S.

“I have to modify them. I cannot drive a car that is not modified. It’s against
my religion,” he joked.

In 2000, Green’s Pacer pickup made its way to the National Rod & Custom Car Hall
of Fame Museum that his mentor, Starbird, founded. Green had donated the pickup
in the late 1970s to a friend who installed four-wheel drive on the pickup. So,
as fate would have it, Green’s history with Pacers is not yet finished.

“The four-wheel drive just ruined the looks of it, so what I am going to do is
take the undercarriage out from under it and put the original carriage under
it,” said Green, ever the tinkerer. “I still have one more appointment with the
Pacer pickup.”

And should another Pacer owner, perhaps yourself, wish to send your trusty stead
to Green for a modification?

“I would change the design of the flares that I did for the CGE because I never
did really like the shape of them,” Green began. “And, I would change the front
spoiler. And, I would put rectangular headlights in the grill and flatten the
hood,” he said and paused. “And, I would take a foot out of the top. It was so
much top.”

Pacer Pickup

"The 'Great Green Hope ' article was written by Eric Dahlquist, publisher at the time of Argus Publications. He was so upset with American Motors (as you can tell from reading the article), that he wrote the story and put it right in the middle of the AMC section of the Argus
1978 New Cars book. As you were reading the reviews on AMC cars, when you turned the page, there was the 'Great
Green Hope' story. It was really an embarrassment to AMC, which was what Eric wanted to do. It was a total surprise to me, as I new nothing about the article being written. Argus was doing stories on me in
Popular Hot Rodding, 1001 Custom & Rod Ideas, and he took pics
and info from those stories." -Carl Green